text:
A Night with The Moth (Full)
The Moth returns to The New Yorker Festival 2013 for an evening of stories about life at the magazine. Andy Borowitz hosts.
Released on 10/8/2013
(mellow saxophone music)
(audience applauds)
Nick Trautwein, ladies and gentlemen.
Let's hear it for Nick Trautwein.
Senior Editor, Nick Trautwein, oh, come on.
Little more, little more love.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Andy Borowitz,
and this is the 2013 New Yorker Festival.
Let's hear it, yes!
(audience cheers)
Tonight's show is Personal Histories:
A Night at The Moth.
Let's hear it for The Moth, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, before we begin the show, very important note,
everybody please turn your cell phones, your devices
completely to the off position,
not just to vibrate or whatever,
just all the way off
because otherwise it will disturb our microphones.
While they do that, I just wanna have word
with Senior Editor Nick Trautwein,
who is also a mean saxophone player,
and how much of your editing duties
involve playing the saxophone?
Is it 70% editing, 30% sax, or pretty much,
or the other way around or?
About 100%.
100% sax, yeah, that's what I,
it's good to have sort of a busker in the hallway,
you know, just to lighten the mood.
You know, one thing I've heard,
I'm not in the sax world,
but one thing I've heard about sax players
is that the true measure of a great sax player
is whether or not he can play the riff
from Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.
Um, is that, is that true?
Is that something?
That's absolutely true.
Yeah, that's really the gold standard.
Can you um, can you, can you,
I don't wanna put you on the spot, but can you do that?
I can, I'll give it a shot.
(Baker Street)
(speaking off microphone)
That's on note, keep going, just you can do it,
he did it a lot in the song.
Okay, that is enough, there we go.
Nick Trautwein.
That is for all you haters out there
who say that the New Yorker does not keep current, okay.
We are as hip as anything.
Well, this is gonna be a great show tonight.
We have four storytellers.
They all work at the New Yorker in various capacities,
and the theme of tonight's show is personal histories.
These are personal stories, true stories
that somehow relate to their work at the New Yorker,
and I was thinking back
to how I got started at the New Yorker.
I'm very lucky to have been
at the New Yorker now for 15 years,
and I was thinking about what the first humor piece
I wrote for the New Yorker was,
and it was in 1998, and it was called
Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst.
And I just went, I just went to the archives.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'll just give you a taste.
It's just the first paragraph of this.
Here's how it went.
It was with great reluctance that I decided
to write about my 30-year friendship with Emily Dickinson.
To many who would read my book,
Miss Dickinson was a cherished literary icon
and any attempt to describe her in human terms
would understandably be resented.
And yet, by not writing this book,
I would be depriving her most ardent admirers
of meeting the Emily Dickinson I was privileged to know.
More than a mentor, she was my anchor,
my compass, my lighthouse.
Except when she was drunk.
And um, it got even more sophisticated from there.
So, if you wanna read the entire story,
you can become a digital subscriber to the New Yorker.
You just go to newyorker.com.
David Remnick actually told me to say that,
so every little bit helps.
But my personal history with the New Yorker
actually started much earlier as I was thinking about it
because growing up in Cleveland,
my parents subscribed to the New Yorker.
It was a big part of our lives.
And my parents were kind of,
I would say hardcore intellectuals.
They were both Phi Beta Kappa.
They both graduated summa cum laude.
And the thing they were proudest of,
I'd have to say, and that they really let define them,
was that they both went to Harvard.
And I was reluctant to say that
because I didn't want you to hate them.
Because there's really no more an alienating thing that you
can say about a person than that they went to Harvard.
I mean, it just, instant hate
when you say that sort of thing.
But growing up with parents like that was really kind of,
it was challenging for a kid because every evening
around the dinner table was like this intellectual gauntlet.
Or is the word gantlet?
Senior Editor, what is it?
Is it gauntlet or gantlet?
(speaks off microphone)
It is gantlet.
You know, that's the kind of thing
my parents would never fuck up.
They'd be like gantlet right out,
right out the bat, it's true.
But they would, at dinner time,
they would talk about things like Proust in French.
They would talk about that.
If they were getting into something like
if they were talking about Lolita or something like that,
they would suddenly say (speaks in foreign language),
they would say.
So, that was kind of a nice nourishing atmosphere
that I grew up in.
And I remember one time they were really disappointed in me
because I didn't know who Dr. Johnson was.
I was nine, you know.
I thought he was a doctor.
Why would you call yourself Dr. Johnson if you're not,
it seems like you'd be opening yourself up
to all kinds of lawsuits really if you said that.
But one moment I really remember,
and it was sort of the signature moment of my childhood,
was that one night in middle school, we were having dinner,
and I was kind of down in the mouth,
and my father asked me, what's wrong?
And I said, well, the kids in school
are continuously telling me that I'm queer,
which back in those days in the '70s in my high school meant
just uncool, square, geeky, whatever,
and my father took this in and he said to me,
they're not continuously telling you you're queer.
(audience laughs)
They're continually telling you you're queer.
Continuously would be, you're queer,
you're queer, you're queer, you're queer, you're queer.
Continually would be, you're queer,
you're queer,
you're queer.
So, I just wanted to give you some insight
into how I became permanently damaged
and that is my story, ladies and gentlemen.
Unfortunately, that is 100% true.
It is completely true.
And that is actually the nature of all Moth stories.
All Moth stories are completely true,
and they're told the way I told that story.
It's no notes, you just have to have it
all up here in your head, tell it from beginning,
middle to end, and the only rule that we have
for telling Moth stories is that they all
have to be about 10 minutes long,
and this is where Nick Trautwein really comes in handy
because Nick, in addition to being Senior Editor
and the leader of a Gerry Rafferty tribute band,
Nick is also our time keeper.
So, at the end of 10 minutes,
you're gonna fire kind of a warning shot from your sax.
What'll that sound like?
(calm saxophone music)
Okay, and that indicates
that it's time to kind of wrap things up.
And after about another minute or two,
Nick really means business, and then what will you do?
All right!
(audience giggles)
I cannot get enough of that riff, by the way.
And incidentally, neither could Gerry Rafferty.
If you listen to that song, that riff appears 5,000 times.
Okay, gosh, are we ready for the show?
I think we are.
Now, only one thing I wanna say
about our storytellers tonight, I was backstage with them,
and they're all lovely people, and I just wanna say,
they really need your warmth and support
in terms of your laughter and your applause.
I mean, laughter at appropriate moments, of course.
But they really do need your support
because these are people who are so great at what they do,
but they spend all day dealing
with New Yorker editors and fact checkers,
and they are not used to interacting with actual people.
So, this is like they're,
we're throwing them out into the wild now.
So, really just when they tell their stories,
just give them your love and support
and it'll make the whole evening so much better.
Um, now, tonight's show, little bit of information,
we've listed actually five storytellers on our list,
and unfortunately, Hisham Matar was
unfortunately called out of the country,
so he's not gonna be here tonight, but we hope
that he'll be able to tell his story at a later date.
Now, by way of introduction,
I asked each one of the storytellers
what was their very first piece in the New Yorker,
and our first storyteller actually
is a New Yorker cartoonist, and he said, I,
this is always a great thing when somebody describes
a New Yorker cartoon without seeing it
because it just makes it so hilarious in my description,
but if you can picture this, it was,
it was a homeless man on the street
and he's holding up a sign saying, will ask for money.
I think that's actually very good.
Matt Diffee, Matt.
When you're a little kid and you hear the term,
musical chairs, you think it's gonna be a little better
than it actually turns out to be
'cause it's just a dumb game.
The chairs aren't musical at all.
I had a similar disappointment
with the term baggage carousel.
And even Nazi party.
The problem with the musical chairs
is that it's a terrible game.
It's not fun at all.
It's just stressful.
And I don't know why we put children through this.
The only good thing is that in a way it kind of
prepares them for the harsh brutality of adult life.
'Cause it's like that sometimes,
especially at the beginning.
Everyone wants to sit down and there's not enough chairs.
In the game, at least that frantic scramble
only lasted a couple seconds.
In real life, it can last a long time.
For me, it lasted seven years,
and it started the day after I graduated from college.
I realized the music had stopped.
I had two problems.
First was I had a B.S. degree,
and I mean that in both senses of the term.
Because I had a degree in art.
I think we can all agree that's kind of a B.S. degree.
My minor was creative writing, which for me
was always comedy writing, so it was art and comedy.
Those were the two things I wanted to do,
and that brings me to my second problem,
I grew up in rural Texas and then later, North Carolina.
And I'm not gonna say that it's harder
to pursue comedy and art in rural south, but it is harder
to pursue art and comedy in the rural south.
It's the same reason why you don't hear about
a lotta little girls in the Upper East Side
growing up to be champion barrel racers.
It's just hard to find the beginning of the path.
But ignorance is strong, and I hit the ground running.
I painted every day.
I tried to peddle my paintings to my friends and family.
I tried to get them to galleries.
I got them in restaurants.
But nothing really happened there.
I was doing comedy at the same time.
I had a comedy team, and we would go to open mic nights,
we'd do shows in coffee houses.
We even did shows literally in our own backyard.
Eventually, those guys all got real jobs,
and I was left alone to write plays and do short films
and to do everything I could, but nothing was happening.
And nothing was definitely making any money,
so I had this string of terrible, crappy day jobs.
I was a waiter, obviously, but it gets worse,
I was a waiter at Applebee's.
I did construction, I did asphalt repair and ceiling,
This is in 100 degree, 100% humidity in the south.
The best terrible job I ever had though,
this might surprise you,
was as a third shift convenient store clerk,
one of those gas station convenient stores
out by the highway, thank you.
I would go on at 11 p.m. and went all the way
till seven in the morning, and sure,
I had to mop up and I had to stock the coolers,
and I had to take out the garbage and clean the bathrooms,
but after that was done, around 2:30,
I had the place to myself, and I always brought
a stack of books, and a notebook to write in.
I had endless coffee, free Slurpees.
I even had those greasy convenient store hot dogs
if I ever wanted one.
I never did.
I'll say something about those hot dogs.
I never did anything with them.
I mean, it's not that bad.
I never, I never took the old ones off or put new ones on.
As far as I know, no one ever did that.
I think those weenies came with the machine.
Anyway, that's basically how I spent my 20s, 22, 23, 24, 25,
and now I'm 29 years old,
still doing it, I'm still trying.
And all I wanted was a place to sit down.
I'm not wantin' a La-Z-Boy, I'm wantin a work chair,
ya know, I want a chance to do the thing I believe I can do,
but now I am looking down the barrel of 30,
and it's just not happening.
And for the first time in my life, I'm starting to think,
what happens if it doesn't happen?
'Cause a lotta people tried this
and a lot of them don't make it, most of 'em don't.
So, that's where I'm at.
One night at midnight, I'm doin' what I always do
at this time of day, I'm watching Letterman.
Me and Dave, he's my only friend, and for some reason,
I watched Letterman so much that for some reason
when I grab the remote control
and I start flipping the channels around,
I realize I don't have any idea
what's coming on at this time of night.
And I'm flipping through the channels
like it's foreign television.
Like, what is this?
And I stop on Nightline because they're doing
a special about New Yorker cartoonists.
This is because the New Yorker
is about to publish its first-ever cartoon issue.
And so I stop, and I watch this, and it sounds odd to say,
but I sort of sensed the significance of this.
I grabbed a VHS tape and threw it in the VCR.
You guys remember those?
I hit record, and the next day as I watched this thing,
and I freeze framed it, I studied this thing,
and I was like this, this is a thing.
And it's crazy that I didn't know about this,
but I told ya, I grew up in Texas.
My family didn't subscribe to the New Yorker.
We weren't communists.
So, for me, cartoons were these
like googley-eyed greeting card things.
The jokes are more punny than funny,
and I never had any interest in that,
but this was different.
This was the kind of precise one-liners
that I admired from Woody Allen
and people like Steven Wright,
and the drawings, they weren't this generic cartoon style.
They were unique and they were art,
and so when the issue came on the news stands,
I went out and grabbed it,
and I poured over the pages and just studied it,
and inside that magazine there was announcement
for a cartoon contest,
and this was before what they do now
with the caption contest in the back of the magazine.
You had to do the whole thing, the drawing and the joke.
And it was co-sponsored by the Algonquin Hotel,
the New Yorker and the Algonquin Hotel.
You had to send in a cartoon that had to do with hotel life,
whatever that means.
And there was no question in my mind
that I was gonna enter this contest.
So, that's what I did.
I worked on it, I went to the library,
I checked out a big stack
of New Yorker cartoon collections, thumbed through 'em,
kinda gave myself a little education,
and I remember one cartoonist stood out to me,
it was George Booth.
It was those single pair of light bulbs and the dogs
and these old crazy people,
and it wasn't necessarily the drawings or the jokes
that stood out to me, even though I loved those.
It was this sort of rural country sensibility
that somehow fit in this sophisticated magazine.
Anyway, I worked for a few weeks.
Finally, the deadline came,
I sent my cartoons in to the contest.
A couple weeks later,
I hear that I'm one of the three finalists.
So, I come, yeah, a few weeks after that, I come down
to New York City with one of my high school buddies.
They put us up in the Algonquin Hotel,
and there's the round table, you know, it's wood paneling,
it's these copper lampshades,
and in the hallways and in the stairwells of the Algonquin,
they had this custom wallpaper,
and it's made out of New Yorker cartoons.
And I'm thinkin' this is definitely a thing.
I'm a long way away
from those greasy convenient store weenies,
and so the big night comes, and I've got on my Sunday best,
and I meet Roz Chast and Sam Gross
and some of the other cartoonists,
and I meet Bob Mankoff who's the cartoon editor.
He's also the juror of this contest.
He's about to present the grand prize
to one of the three finalists, and it turns out to be me.
And I win, the prize is a giant styrofoam check
that I get to give to charity.
I thought the same thing your thinking.
I thought, I bet you my construction worker fingers
could probably beat Bob's, you know, literary fingers,
and I could yank this thing and make a break for it,
but then I started thinking it through.
I was like, I probably can't get it
through the revolving door, and even if I did
get through the revolving door,
I probably can't get it through the bank slot.
I'd have to lob it over the top of the plexiglass.
Anyway, I reluctantly let go of the check,
but my real prize came about an hour later.
Afterwards, we're all millin' around and Bob comes up
and he asks me, so have you ever consi,
you ever submitted cartoons to the magazine?
And I resist telling him that no,
not only have I never submitted cartoons,
but these cartoons he's seen
are actually the first cartoons I've ever done.
Instead, I just say, no.
And he says two magic words, he says, you should.
And he might as well have said, open sesame
'cause that's the effect it had.
There was this woosh of air and this big iron door
of the New Yorker cracked open just this much,
and you best believe, I slipped the tip of my boot
into that gap faster than a caffeinated jackrabbit.
Sorry, I just went full Texan on ya.
Anyway, I got home, and all I did was cartoon
from that point on, no more comedy, no more art.
From now on, it was gonna be a mashup of these two things.
My greatest passions
and up to that point, my greatest failures.
The end of the week, I drove up my best three ideas,
and I sent them to the New Yorker.
Fifth week of doing this, I get a letter, remember those?
New Yorker stationary,
it says I had sold a cartoon to the New Yorker magazine.
And I don't know if I can, if I can tell you how that felt,
but if you could imagine bein' on your feet workin',
walkin', waitin' for seven years,
and then somebody pushin' up a nice fluffy comfy chair,
that's pretty close to how it felt.
After you sell your first cartoon,
you're allowed to come down to the magazine
and bring your cartoons in person.
So, I did that, I rode the train down,
and I sat across from Bob.
I showed him my three cartoons,
and that's when he told me
that the rest of the cartoonists were doing 10 a week.
So, I went home, and I was gonna be impressive,
I did 15 a week, every week,
and that first year, I sold four,
but I was elated because I finally had found a place.
And I actually remember the precise moment when I knew that.
It was that first trip to New Yorker offices.
I had seen Bob, and I was going down in the elevator
all by myself, grinning ear to ear,
and I like to think that somewhere in the basement
of the building there's some security footage of that,
just a 29-year-old kid just smilin' for no reason.
I get to the lobby, the doors open,
and I'm standing face to face with George Booth.
And he's mid-70s at that point.
He's kind of tall, kind of goofy graceful.
He's from Missouri.
He's kinda me, and I'm looking at him, and I'm thinking,
I'm hoping that I'm looking into my future.
And I instinctively reach my hand out, and I say,
hi Mr. Booth, I'm Matt Diffee,
I just sold my first cartoon.
And he shakes my hand, and he kinda raises an eyebrow,
and he says the perfect thing to me,
he says, well, welcome aboard.
And that's the exact moment when I knew
I'd finally found my seat.
Matt Diffee.
That was amazing.
You know, Matt is a very, as you could see,
a very modest sort of, you know, soft-spoken guy,
but you know, he was too modest to say this
that since he came to the New Yorker,
his success has been so influential,
the New Yorker staff is now dominated by rural Texans.
It's pretty much, including, I should add,
El Paso's own David Remnick, yes, it's just amazing.
It's been an amazing thing.
None of that was true, okay.
Our next storyteller said that her very first
contribution to the New Yorker was an article
about a lost zebra.
Let's hear it for Dana Goodyear, Dana.
I got to the New Yorker in 1999.
I was 22 years old, and I immediately recognized
what a special place it was.
Nobody made eye contact in the halls.
Nobody spoke in the elevator.
Nobody spoke above a murmur at all, if it could be avoided.
The first time I remember a writer directly addressing me,
other than to ask me to do a little bit of research,
was one day, Malcolm Gladwell stopped
in front of the partition to my cubicle
and said that he never again was going to use
the word I in one of his stories.
The writer that he most admired at the magazine,
he said, had never used I and this was the standard
for elegance in writing for a New Yorker writer.
The section in the magazine that I wanted to write for,
the Talk of the Town, actually had a an explicit rule
that you couldn't use I,
so contributors would do all kinds of maneuvers
to avoid using I.
There were amused my bystanders and amateur investigators,
and when I got my first story published,
I resorted to an even more wall flowerish alter-ego
and used somebody, so, in my pieces
when somebody says something to does something, that's me.
I moved out to Los Angeles, and I started writing
about food and the emerging food movement there,
and after a couple of stories, David Remnick called
and said, okay, you can keep doing this, this is fun,
we like it, but you need to be a presence in these stories.
And I thought that was wonderful.
I had real direction and real permission to do something,
and it also made a huge amount of sense to me
because food writing is, you know, the job of the writer
is to provide vicarious pleasure for the reader,
and I really belonged in the stories in a way,
but doing that would mean undoing all the ways in which
I taught myself to be publishable in the New Yorker.
So, not only did I try to avoid I, but I, when reporting,
I tried to be sort of the person without qualities,
so I would arrive, you know, without any preferences,
without any opinions, never taking a sip of water,
never going to the bathroom.
I mean, I just was, you know, neutrality herself,
and so, I had to really work on it.
And I started to write about some of the crazier aspects
of foodie-ism, and I was writing about
raw milk smuggling operations and people eating insects
and every kind of organ meat you can imagine,
and I was starting to put myself in the stories,
and it was fun, it was hard, but it was fun.
And, however, I still didn't tell the magazine when I
became pregnant with my second child for quite a while.
I was in California,
they weren't gonna know what was going on with me,
and I didn't want those assignments to dry up.
I wanted to keep doing this crazy stuff.
I also didn't tell the people that I was writing about
for as long as I could get away with it
because, you know, we've all seen what happens
when a pregnant lady eats brie in a restaurant,
you know, it's very destabilizing, but--
For a pregnant lady to be doing some of the stuff
that I was doing was really, I felt that it would
just intrude on the story so much,
and people would talk about nothing but that,
and of course, I was there to be writing down
what they were talking about that was related to the food.
So, I kept it quiet, and you know,
when you're writing about food,
you can be 20 pounds overweight and nobody notices,
so it was, it was how I found myself
four 1/2 months pregnant, sitting down to lunch
with a bunch of adventurous diners
eating ox penis soup and a desert of frog fallopian tubes.
They were none the wiser.
By this point, I was working on a book
about these experiences and I realized that the book was due
soon and the baby was due,
and I needed to find a place for this narrative to land.
There was something going on,
which I had sort of nervously been tracking
out of the corner of my eye in the food movement,
and that was everybody was trying to do something
more outrageous and more outrageous and more outrageous
and so the final taboo of cannibalism was actually something
that people were starting to talk about.
(audience chuckles)
Anthony Bourdain said at a food festival
that he would taste human flesh.
He may have been joking, but he said it.
I was hanging out with these women in New York
who were making cheese out of human breast milk
and doing lacto whey pickling out of human whey
and as an exploration of the limits of locavorism.
There are no cows in Manhattan anymore,
so you have to make milk with uh.
(audience laughing)
I interviewed a woman who was part of
a sort of extreme eating club who told me
with great bitterness that when she'd had a kidney removed,
the hospital wouldn't let her take it home
because she had wanted to cook it and eat it.
And even Daniel Patterson whose restaurant in San Francisco
has two stars from the Michelin Guide described for me
making a Bolognese out of his wife's placenta.
And of course, he's a chef, and you don't,
you don't serve something without tasting it.
It was her, but he tasted it.
So, there I was,
nine and 1/2 months pregnant,
and I realized that for a very limited time,
I had a small window of opportunity here.
If I was going to explore this,
I was gonna have to eat my placenta.
It was a question, you know, could I,
could I eat a human organ?
Could I insert myself this far into the narrative?
Could I be such a hack, that was the real scary question.
Four days after my child was born, the doorbell rang.
There was a very cute, neat woman standing there.
She had on a flared skirt with black polka dots on it
and red sandals that were rubber.
She was carrying a two-gallon bucket of bleach,
a sheath of knives, and red Le Creuset steamer.
She was a professional placenta cook.
She disinfected my kitchen.
She removed from the fridge
the organ which had been thawing there.
And she set to work.
My husband walked in the room,
and though I had tried to prepare him for this,
he was nonetheless unprepared.
He looked quite disturbed.
I didn't blame him.
I was looking at this thing.
It was disturbing.
It was glistening, it was livid, it was the most,
just the most intimidating piece of meat I've ever seen,
and at this point, I had seen and eaten so much.
And I just, you know, I thought with real horror
about what I was contemplating doing.
And the exploitation of myself that it represented
was actually a bigger problem for me than the meat itself.
So, Sarah, the placenta cook, was doing her thing,
and she picked up the placenta,
and she sorta slid her hands under a membrane
and opened them out like this.
And she sort of said, guys, right here,
this is where your baby lived.
And it was an incredibly transforming thing to say.
All the sudden, this frightening piece of meat
was something else entirely.
It was the home where, it was the place
where our baby grew from being a few cells
to being a miniature person,
and it was actually beautiful and my husband felt that too.
He took my hand, and we sort of looked at this,
this space that she had created with her hands,
and I felt grateful that I had gotten us
to this crazy place actually
because we otherwise never would've seen that.
It felt like a real privilege to see that space,
and it also felt so private, and it felt like,
and it felt like it was our child's privacy too.
It wasn't just too private for me to write about for myself.
It was for her sake.
So, I decided that I couldn't,
this was too far, this was too far into the story.
I could not write about it.
I won't ever write about it.
I know that I will continue to struggle
with this question of how much of me
belongs in my writing, but in the meantime,
I did come up with a little rule for myself,
which is that I can write about eating
and I can write about myself,
but I can't write about eating myself.
Dana Goodyear!
Well, we are half-way through the show,
how are you enjoying it so far?
Is it workin' out?
They're doing great.
I should probably say at this point that all
the remaining stories will be about eating placenta.
So, I hope that's cool with everybody.
And then you'll go out to dinner.
It will be great.
Hi Nick, you've been very quiet.
Everybody's been obeying, obeying the rules.
We haven't been hearing
my favorite riff from '70s music at all.
Can I ask you something, just some, something, uh,
Here come on up here, and you can talk
into the microphone like one of the grown-ups.
How did you get involved in the saxophone business?
Uh, when I was a kid, my mother got a recording
of a clarinetist named Richard Stoltzman,
and he was playing a Thelonious Monk tune called Blue Monk,
and I loved it, and I would listen to it
over and over and over again,
and so somebody for my birthday gave me
a Thelonious Monk recording, and I fell in love with that.
And the next time I saw an uncle of mine,
a very sophisticated uncle,
and he gave me a live Miles Davis recording
and another recording by Duke Ellington,
and I loved them madly,
and a friend of mine had a saxophone.
I just started borrowing it,
and I guess when I was 16, I got, you know,
I cajoled my parents into buying me a horn,
and I sort of stopped going to class
and started sitting in a band room a lot.
Well, that was a very complete answer.
That was, that really
walked me through it almost in real time.
No, that was great.
Before we go, I just have to ask, I personally,
I think the saxophone, I know Thelonious Monk, yeah yeah,
but I think the saxophone kind of began and ended
with Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.
That's just me, I know other people feel differently.
But the '80s were like sort of a big era.
That was like the era,
saxophone owned the 1980s, in a sense.
Do you have a favorite saxophone part or riff
from that, from that very cheesy era of music?
Do you have anything that you,
or are you just classy all the way, you know?
New Yorker, monocle, the whole bit, you know, is that,
or do you have any, do you have like a favorite
rock and roll riff from pop music, as we call it?
Oh god, um.
I'm trying to think of
the least nerdy answer I can give you here.
It's too late for that, Nick, it's really.
My favorite rock and roll bit
is Bobby Keys' solo on the Rolling Stones tune Miss You.
Oh, I love that, can you play that?
Can you play a little Miss You for us?
That'll class up the thing a little bit.
(audience applauds) (speaks off microphone)
♫ Da da da da du
Yeah, but--
But the saxophone part.
Oh, that's not that part, okay.
I did the Mick Jagger part.
Sorry, well play, do you know any of that?
Can you play any of the Bobby Keys bit?
Or I don't wanna put you on the spot.
Okay, so the melody's here.
(Miss You)
That's the part I know, right.
Right, and so the solo.
And we all say miss you, right?
And the solo-- Okay.
You are being wasted the New Yorker magazine.
I just wanna say that.
Nick Trautwein, ladies and gentlemen, amazing Senior Editor.
That was great to know.
Okay, now, let's see if can master the microphone.
Okay, we are now gonna move on to our second half.
So, who do we have next.
Okay, I asked our next storyteller
what his first piece in the New Yorker was,
and he started with a crowd pleaser
entitled The Plague Years.
That's our idea of a crowd pleaser at the New Yorker.
It was a diary of several years he spent in Cuba,
Jon Lee Anderson, Jon.
Well, you're even taller than me, Andy.
Here, I got it.
I think that's about right, isn't it?
Good evening, everyone.
In this spring of 2004, I drove south from Baghdad
with a couple of companions, both photographers,
to the holy city of Najaf, holy to the world's Shiites.
It had been a year since the American invasion of Iraq
and since that time, the country's Sunni minority
displaced with Saddam's toppling
had risen in an insurgency against the Americans,
but the Shiite majority, favored by that displacement
had been mostly on side, mostly quiet,
but a couple of days earlier, they had risen up
in an insurrection against the American occupation as well.
And so, our purpose that day was to see what was going on.
We drove with my driver, Salaam, a Shiite,
and he helped us negotiate the road blocks
by the gunmen who were now insurgent that controlled
the approaches to the city and in the city itself.
And it was a very tense, surreal day.
Because of Salaam, we were able to, Westerners,
we were able to get through.
We felt that it could explode at any moment,
and it's several hours from Baghdad,
and it was a bad time to be on the roads
in the country anyway on your own,
and so we did not stay long.
We resolved to, we stayed a couple of hours
and decided mid-afternoon that we would head back.
North of Najaf, half an hour north, in a wooded area,
there were eight or 10 gunmen waiting for us in, on the road
and they blocked our way through.
At first, we thought that Salaam would be able to talk,
talk us past them, but that didn't happen.
Some looked uncertain, but they were more tense,
and in the middle of the negotiation,
a man, obviously a figure of authority,
with a turban and long, grey beard
came running out of the bushes
and ferociously yelled at everyone
and ordered them to take us to detain us.
They all trained their guns on us.
The situation became hostile.
Several piled into the car with us,
and other men appeared in a car in front of us,
and we were led not where we wanted to go
but back into this labyrinth of low buildings
and back streets and eventually to a mosque
where we were left inside the car under guard,
men standing outside pointing their guns at us,
as Salaam was led away and into the mosque by other gunmen.
During this whole time, he had been
unusually frightened looking and alarmed,
so I knew our situation was potentially bad.
We sat there watching the afternoon fade
and getting increasingly worried about our situation.
I remember looking outside the front of the car,
'cause we couldn't get out,
we were literally held prisoner inside the car
as the hours went by, and men and boys
gathered on the side walk in front of us
and gazed at us with this,
with the kind of detached neutral expression
that I've come to associate with the look people give
condemned men on their way to an execution.
That was pretty much our mood.
Just around sundown, Salaam reappeared
coming out of the mosque, again accompanied, was,
got into the car, was very flustered, didn't look at me,
turned on the engine, and said to me, just Mr. Jon, we go.
And we did.
The gunmen fell back, and we left.
The wooded area on the outskirts of Najaf,
now it was dark, was deserted, there was nobody anywhere,
nobody on the road, and we, I think, again, felt
extremely apprehensive about what we might find on the road.
We shouldn't, nobody would go on the road at night
in Iraq at that point, but we had no choice.
And none of us spoke for the longest time,
and I remember, it must've been about 20 minutes,
I turned to Salaam and I said, so what happened?
What happened, Salaam, tell me what happened in the mosque.
He didn't answer, he just fixedly stared at the road
and drove and after about 20 minutes, he started to speak,
and he told me that, he said, Mr. Jon, in the mosque,
there was a young insurgent leader, no more than 23,
and he described him as crazy, as violent and crazy,
and that he had had to argue with him
that we were not spies, we were journalists,
and that he had to do everything he could
to get us freed and to be able to leave.
And then mentioned that he saw, that he had seen westerners
also held prisoner inside the mosque
at the other end of the mosque,
and one of them was my friend, John Burns,
the New York Times bureau chief.
I was shocked at this news, and I was furious at Salaam,
and we, I began to yell at him, and I said,
why didn't you tell me before,
and he just, again, looked back at the road
and drove and shut down on me,
and I realized that he hadn't told me before
because I would've insisted he help
and he was afraid for our faith and just wanted
to get us out of there, those of us who were under his care.
And we drove back to Baghdad.
There's a nice coda to this story,
which is that he did everything he could
over the next 24 hours to get John Burns and the others
who were with him freed, and they were freed.
By that time, they had been driven blindfolded
and trussed out into the desert
and were likely going to be executed.
So, Salaam saved their lives,
and he had saved our lives as well.
And this was something he had done at least once before
and would go on to do several more times
as the situation in Iraq unraveled
and I was there reporting it pretty much full time
for the New Yorker for about three years.
I would spend a couple of months in Iraq,
very often staying with John Burns
at the New York Times fortified compound in Baghdad,
and I would go home where I live in England
and back and forth, but it was,
it dominated my life for quite a while.
The country, as you all know, the civil war intensified,
and it became a situation where not only both
Shiite and Sunni communities were attacking the Americans,
and there was this counter-insurgent war,
but they also began to attack one another,
and so, by the mid-2000s, it was a charnel land of bloodshed
and in that time, I finally took a break from Iraq
for not quite a year, but there was about a year
when I didn't go.
And I returned in 2007 at the height
of the sectarian civil war.
It was probably the worst time at this point in Iraq,
about 100 people were being murdered every day
just in Baghdad alone in very gruesome fashion with,
you know, with drills and tortured to death
in the sectarian civil war.
The very day I arrived there,
Salaam came to the fortified compound where I was staying,
and he told me that in the interim time
that I hadn't seen him, he had gotten involved in the
sectarian civil war himself and was now killing people.
He began to tell me how it had come about
and what he was doing.
We always had full disclosure with each other.
We were very close.
And he told me that a couple of months before
his best friend in his neighborhood had been
ambushed and killed by the same Shiite militia
that had abducted us back in 2004
but with which he and his friend had actually allied
themselves in the recent months as the war came to the city.
He was a Shiite himself, so they were helping this militia,
but in a murky episode, that militia killed his friend.
The younger brother of his best friend
was an eye witness to the killing, survived it,
was undetected by the assailants
and came to tell Salaam what had happened.
They then went to, that friend's name was Kareem,
they then went to Kareem and his older brother's mother
and there and then, more or less ordered by the mother,
Salaam vowed to help Kareem take blood vengeance
for his older brother's death,
and there and then Kareem vowed to kill 10 men for every
finger on his dead brother's hand, 100 people.
At this point, they had killed about 20 people.
Now, they were doing so secretly by stealth,
killing people related to the assailants
within their very neighborhood and keeping it secret.
And Salaam began to describe some, at my insistence,
he began to describe some of the killings
they had carried out.
The very first wasn't actually one of the assailants at all.
It was the father of that assailant.
I was shocked at this and I questioned him about that,
and he reacted vehemently to say
that according to tribal code in Iraq,
it was perfectly okay to take the lives of anyone
related to the assailants who had killed his best friend,
and they were proceeding to do this.
He described another scene, which I found very disturbing,
where they had also employed the service of a gang
which were kidnapping people for them,
and then they would then dispose of them.
In this particular case,
they had a number of men in a room, hooded, trussed,
who were being tortured before their execution,
and by the way Salaam described the scene,
I realized that he was there too, and he saw my expression,
he saw my face, before I could say anything, he said,
Mr. Jon, I didn't do anything, I didn't torture them,
and he tried to assure me that he didn't,
he hadn't personally been involved in that
and that he had left the room before they were killed.
I realized that this was,
this had completely altered our relationship.
He could no longer be my, my man Friday.
He had become my everything in Iraq, my, my,
you know, my s, my bodyguard, my translator, my friend,
and now he was, he had become a killer.
So, it posed a bit of a dilemma.
But I decided I would report it just like I would
any other story in Iraq, and I said,
you have to introduce me to Kareem, you're his accomplice.
And he did, he brought him the next day.
Kareem was a man, very intense, medium height,
I remember he had a buzz haircut, big eyes,
and a very intense look.
He not only confirmed everything Salaam had just told me,
he added details, and the story was actually,
actually much worse.
He told me that they used an abandoned factory
that was somehow his family's property
in a kind of neutral area in a neighboring district
and that one of the ruses that he and Salaam employed
was to invite people who were known to them,
acquaintances, almost friends in some cases,
to come play backgammon at that house
or to go pigeon mumbling, it's an old sport in Iraq,
from the roof of this factory,
and to drink some Iraq, Iraqi liquor or have some tea.
They would come to this place and then he and Salaam
would put the date rape drug in their tea,
and then when they became groggy,
they would slit their throats or shoot them in the head,
and they would take their bodies and dump them
on waste ground in between their neighborhood
and the nearest Sunni neighborhood
to make it look as if they were Sunni sectarian victims.
And that they always reported in to Kareem's mother as well.
I then said to them both, you have to arrange
for me to see Kareem's mother, and they did.
It was, at that time, the neighborhood
was under insurgent control, the very militia
that they were killing the members of,
but they rigged it so that we made a flying visit
at about two in the afternoon when they assumed
that most of the centuries would be a bit dopey
and if I stayed no more than 10 minutes, it would be fine.
We raced up to the front of the house.
I went down the stairs, and there was Kareem's mother,
and the widow of his, of her eldest son,
and their two daughters, girls of about nine and 11.
She confirmed everything that Salaam and Kareem had told me
and added a new dimension, which was that she,
she explained that she had asked them
to bring her pieces of all of the victims
as proof of what they had done,
proof that they were carrying out the blood vengeance,
and in front of the widow and her daughters,
she described to me the pieces, a hand, a foot, fingers,
a nose, an ear, in one case, an Adam's apple, another,
a mustachioed upper lip.
Each time, she would wrap these in a scarf
and go and take one of the collective taxis
that run every half an hour between Baghdad
and the holy city of Najaf.
It being holy to the world Shiites,
many of them tried to be buried there,
and on the outskirts of town is a vast, vast cemetery,
and there, her eldest son was buried,
and she would take these scarf
with the pieces of the dead men
and she would go to the grave of her son
and she would bury the piece of flesh in the dirt
and utter incantations, pray to god,
and tell her son what she was doing,
here son, I am giving this piece of this evil man
that we have killed on your behalf here,
and she would pray to god.
I uh, I argued with Salaam over this.
There was, I found it very unsettling, of course,
the whole situation was deeply disturbing.
There was something especially disturbing about Kareem,
at the point at which he had described for me
how they disposed of the victims and so on.
He then offered that he had selected
a victim for the next day,
and I asked him how he felt about what he was doing.
He got a half smile and kind of far away look in his eyes,
and he said, I feel good, I feel better each time,
I feel closer to god, and I felt that he had gone crazy.
I felt that I was in the presence of a serial killer.
And I told this to Salaam, and he agreed
that maybe Kareem had gone too far,
but anyway, we parted as friends as usual,
Salaam and Kareem killing people and I left,
and I never went back to Iraq.
Some months later, Salaam was arrested and thrown in prison,
accused of several murders, not these.
They never found out about those.
He managed through contacts to be
bounced out of prison after three years
and now lives in exile in a country in Europe,
and periodically, we call one another,
and it's as if, I guess, until now,
I've had my final judgement of him somehow on a kind of,
I guess a kind of shelf
because of that very deep bond of friendship we had.
Here was a man who arguably risked his life
repeatedly for me and it went beyond what I paid him.
It was about some kind of deep, deep kindred spirit
we felt with one another, and there was a time
when I actually commended my life to him
knowing that he could sold me for millions of dollars
at any point as a westerner in Iraq for ransom.
And so, I had also witnessed his country implode,
and I had seen what a civil war does to a people, you know,
and I think this isn't only exclusive to Iraq.
When a civil war happens in a country,
it's as if the people, the society itself
is caught up by the demon of war,
and for a time, killing becomes acceptable,
and then it runs its course and it no longer is.
And I had seen Salaam make that entire journey,
and I had also seen the best of him and the worst of him.
If there's a balance or a scale
in which I have to decide what to choose
moral condemnation of Salaam for what he had done,
for what happened or our friendship,
I chose friendship.
Jon Lee Anderson.
I am so glad you didn't come in
with Baker Street at some point.
That would've been horrible.
Thank god that didn't happen.
Okay, before our final storyteller,
I have some thank yous to go around.
First of all, I wanna thank
all of our wonderful storytellers.
Let's have a nice round of applause for them.
Thelonious Trautwein, of course,
Let's hear it for this wonderful venue, SIR Stage37.
Let's hear it for them, they made it all happen.
The directors of tonight's show,
Jennifer Hixson and Meg Bowels, let's hear it for them.
Tonight's producer, Catherine McCarthy.
And of course, we have to thank all of the people
at the New Yorker Festival who make
all these wonderful programs possible,
first of all, our festival director, Rhonda Sherman.
Let's hear it for Rhonda.
And the producers Michael Schulman, Alexis Goldberg,
and Margaret Alden, so let's hear it
for all the New Yorker people, yes.
Two things you should know about The Moth
they're putting out there,
they've got a new, their very first Moth book.
It's called 50 True Stories,
and it features stories by quite a few New Yorker writers,
including Adam Gopnik, Malcolm Gladwell,
Nathan Englander, and Jenny Allen, so check that out.
Also, November 6, The Moth is doing a very special show.
It's their members show.
You have to become a Moth member to go, right?
Is that the deal?
That's the deal.
So, if you join, go to themoth.org and become a Moth member,
it's really worth it 'cause there's so many great things
that come along with that, including you get to go
to this great show at Cooper Union November 6.
The show is called Duck and Cover: Stories of Fallout.
Okay, so, here's our very last, our very last storyteller,
and I asked her what her very first piece was,
and this was actually a little bit of nostalgia
because the New Yorker doesn't do this so often anymore,
but they used to publish these little news breaks
at the bottom of some of the columns
when they had founds,
yeah, I'm getting some recognition here,
when somebody in the printed media would,
remember when there were these things,
there were these things called newspapers
that they'd write things in
and there would be sometimes a very funny,
unintentional goof that somebody had made in a newspaper,
and the New Yorker would print that little item
and then have a witty rejoinder,
and she does not remember the exact nature of the item,
but it involved John Denver,
so that sort of dates it in sort of a carbon 14 way,
but let's hear it for our final storyteller,
Mary Norris, Mary.
Let's see if we can do this the proper way.
How's that? Good.
Good? That's good.
It's 1985, and my brother Dennis is driving a cab.
He picks up William Shawn, and he says,
aren't you William Shawn, the editor of the New Yorker?
And Mr. Shawn allows as how he is,
and then Dennis says, my sister works for you, Mary Norris.
And Mr. Shawn says yes, he knows me, and he adds,
not only does your sister do her job well,
but she's a good writer.
And Dennis shoots back, then why don't you publish her?
So, my brother the literary agent.
So, I am a copy editor.
On the copy desk, we fix misspellings.
We impose New Yorker style on other spellings.
We spell theater with an R-E, not an E-R.
We hyphenate teenager.
We put those two dots, the diaeresis over
the second O in cooperate and the second E in preexisting.
We mess a little with the punctuation,
maybe screw in a serial comma,
but nothing anyone will notice.
It's a kind of an invisible job.
The only time anyone ever pays any attention to you
is if you make a mistake,
but it's a good job, and I'm lucky to have it.
It took me years to claw my way up to this job,
but what I really want to do is write.
I had a little bit of success.
Mr. Shawn bought a Talk story,
a piece for the Talk of the Town, or two,
and I like to think he accepted them
on the merits of the writing and not because
he was bullied by a cab driver,
but most of the time my pieces come back
with a little pink slip attached
that says, not right for us.
After a while, it begins to feel like
that is going to be my epitaph, not right for us.
So, and I can't help, I admit feeling a little envy
of the writers whose work it falls to me to copy edit.
Envy is a great evil, and I tamp it down.
But then--
Then I notice I couldn't help but notice too
that for others on the staff at the magazine,
the copy desk was just a stepping stone.
They went on to become editors or writers,
and for me, it's this vast plateau where I'm,
I basically feel stuck,
but the job has it's benefits.
There is a night shift, so several days a week, I'm free.
I take language classes.
I studied Greek and Italian.
And I have time to write.
So, I got started on a novel.
It was about a woman who worked at a magazine.
Oddly enough.
And she had many eccentric coworkers.
She studied languages.
Mostly Greek and Italian.
And she felt stuck.
So, I called it Sophia Rampant,
and you will not find it on Amazon.com
because it never got published.
But I did, after many years, move up at the New Yorker.
I became a page O.K.'er.
It's a job that doesn't exist anywhere else.
A page O.K.'er is a combination of a copy editor,
a proofreader, and a query proofreader.
Our job is to manage a piece through to print
and make sure that no mistakes are introduced
in the editorial process.
Think of it as, like this, working on the copy desk
is to being an O.K.'er as the comma is to the semicolon.
It's subtle, okay.
And a lot depends on it.
Most of the writers appreciate what we do,
others not so much, and that's okay.
You can ask anything, you can query anything you want
as long as you don't get mad about it
when it's not accepted.
So, I'm working as an O.K.'er
and trying to revise this novel,
inject a little life into it,
when one of the strangest things
that I hope will ever happen to me happens,
something stranger than I could have made up.
My brother Dennis, the one who
picked Mr. Shawn up in his taxi,
who has now been working as a church organist
for several years,
announces that he's transsexual.
He always wanted to be a girl.
And I did not see this coming,
but it happens very fast.
Dennis starts taking hormones.
He puts on the lipstick and the dangly earrings.
And he wears a tutu.
He quits the church job and starts riding around
the village on a gigantic tricycle
with a concert harp on the back playing the accordion
and singing Shirley Temple songs.
Some of you may be fans.
She was legendary in the village.
Her name is Baby Dee.
It was, this looked like good material to me sometimes.
I thought, well, why don't you
write about your crazy relative,
and I thought even of trying to shoehorn her into the novel,
but I couldn't write about her because she made me so angry.
I had always been the only girl in our family growing up.
I had an older brother and a younger brother,
and I was in the middle and it was the only thing
that distinguished me in the family.
Plus, I'd been jealous of Dennis for being a boy
and once Dennis was Dee, I was convinced
that she was going to better at being a girl than I was.
She was certainly trying harder.
So, we grew estranged.
Dee took her act to Europe, and I was kind of relieved.
She was out of my hair for a while.
But while she was in Europe, she had,
she went through some deep emotional shift, she,
her music got more serious, but the most amazing thing
is that she decided to go back to Cleveland
and help take care of our aging parents,
and this had never occurred to me.
So, how could I not appreciate this and be grateful to Dee?
And it still took a while, but gradually, I accepted Dee.
I started using the right feminine pronouns,
and at that point I thought,
well now I can write about this.
So, I started writing a memoir.
I thought it'd be about
our childhood and Dee's transformation
and my often benighted reaction to it,
and I would call it, My Sibling Dee.
So, I had a lot invested in this,
and I started sending it to agents,
and one agent after another wrote back basically,
not right for us.
And I've never given up the desire to be a writer,
but I have to admit I'm starting to get discouraged.
I've been on the copy desk for 30 years now.
[Audience] Aww.
Ooh.
(audience laughs and cheers)
It does sound like a long time, doesn't it.
But it made me think of my father.
My father was a fireman in Cleveland.
We come from rather different Clevelands, Andy.
And when I was in college,
I had this insight about my father that
when he was growing up,
he had no burning desire to be a fireman.
He needed a job, it was a good job, he took the job,
he stuck with it, 25 years later,
that was it, he was a fireman.
So, maybe being a copy editor
was gonna be like bein' a fireman.
So, this is where I was in the spring of 2012,
and two young women who work for
the magazine's web department came to my office door.
It's one of these sliding glass doors,
like something over a shower stall.
And they say, they tell me, some guy has written a piece
for the Times that makes fun of our commas.
Would you write something about commas?
I thought, oh, commas, must I?
But, why me?
And then I remember, oh yeah,
I've been a copy editor for 30 years,
I really ought to know something about commas.
And I have on my desk this artifact that's come down to me
from a legendary New Yorker proofreader.
It's a canister with perforated lid,
and she had wrapped it brown paper and drawn commas on it
with a pencil, and that's the comma shaker.
So, her comment on our style was
that we just sprinkle in the commas.
And suddenly, I saw a way that I could write the piece,
and it went up on the blog.
It was called, In Defense of Nutty Commas,
and it went viral.
It was funny to me.
I'd been keeping a blog myself on alternate
side of the street parking for a couple a years,
and it had a loyal readership of, in the tens, you know, so.
There was somebody wrote on Twitter, the New Yorker
is blogging about commas, it's like Christmas morning.
I realized at that point that I had broken a taboo.
The New Yorker is famously snobbish
about its editorial practices, and once I opened the door,
all these questions came gushing in, you know,
like what is it with that umlaut, meaning the diaeresis,
and why do you double the Ls in traveled
and the S in focused, and why do you insist
on writing out large numbers that aren't round,
you know, like 562,425, and suddenly, I had a column.
I was writing about things like the semicolon and--
(audience and Mary laugh)
Obscenities in the magazine
and an Old English character called the thorn,
and I also wrote about pencils.
I still work in pencil on paper,
and I'm a terrible pencil snob.
I like a nice soft lead.
And who knew?
It turns out that there's this
huge community online of pencil fanciers, so.
So, this was pretty exciting and, pencils and punctuation.
So, somebody at the office suggested I talk to an agent,
and I went back to the last agent
who had passed on my Dee memoir
and suggested a book on these subjects,
and he got very enthusiastic,
and he helped me work up a proposal, and in August of 2012,
he sent the proposal out and within days,
I had this very heady series of meetings
with editors and publishers in their Manhattan offices.
The book went to auction.
I felt like a prize heifer.
And it sold for more money than, in my wildest dreams
I had ever hoped to get for Sophia or for the Dee memoir,
but it really wasn't about the money.
It was about finally being recognized as a writer.
So, no one could have been more happy for me than Dee was.
Dee started sending me links to silly cars I could buy
and admonishing me to write the best possible book.
It's working title is Between You and Me,
not Between You and I, right?
Nobody would commit that barbarism in this room, right?
Confessions of a Comma Queen.
And yes, I have to write about dangling participles
and the difference between who and whom,
oh, and the nominative and the objective
and that annoying habit some writers still have
of putting two spaces after the period.
But oh, there's been a wonderful side effect of all of this,
which is I'm not envious anymore.
I do have to write the book though.
Mary Norris.
That's our show, ladies and gentlemen, good night!
(audience member whistles)


This is an example of how to use a calibrated optical density step tablet to calibrate an image. Normally the step tablet, and the image to be calibrated, are scanned or photographed at the save time. In this example, however, only the step tablet was scanned.
Figure 1. Optical density step tablet.
Figure 1 is a Kodak No. 3 Calibrated Step Tablet scanned with an Epson Expression 1680 Professional scanner. The tablet has 21 steps with a density range of 0.05 to 3.05 OD. This image is available as a ZIP compressed TIFF file that can be opened directly in ImageJ. Calibrated step tablets are available from Tiffen (Kodak) and Stouffer.
The first step in calibrating the image is to measure the mean gray value of the background and the first 18 steps. We don't measure the last three steps be because they are not distinguishable and also because the calibration function in ImageJ is currently limited to 20 measurements. Before starting, make sure the "Results" window is closed. Create a rectangular selection that fills most of one step without overlapping another step. Move the selection to the white background at the left end of the image and measure it. Then, starting at the left, move the selection and measure each of the first 18 steps.
Figure 2. OD step tablet with adjusted LUT.
About half way through the process of measuring the steps, use the Image/Adjust/Brightness/Contrast tool to adjust the LUT so that the darker steps on the right side of the tablet are visible. There should be 19 measurements listed in the "Results" window when you are finished.
Figure 3. Analyze/Calibrate dialog box.
Open the Analyze/Calibrate dialog box and you will see that the 19 measurements have been automatically entered into the left column. Paste the following OD values into the right column, select "Rodbard" from the "Function" popup menu, enter "O.D." into the "Unit" field, then press "OK". ImageJ will then generate and display the calibration curve.
The image is now calibrated to optical density. Save the image in TIFF format and the calibration curve will be saved with it. You can use the same calibration curve with all open images by checking "Global Calibration" in the Analyze/Calibrate dialog box.
Figure 5. Profile plot of uncalibrated image.
Before calibration, pixel values are in gray level units in the range 0-255. After calibration, pixel values are in OD.
Figure 6. Profile plot of calibrated image.


We are hosting monthly after-school meetups with kids from Kindergarten to 4th grade. This will be a time for your kids to hang out with their classmates and do themed activities.
In celebration of Earth Day, we will be planting seeds and cleaning the environment! Each child will get a cup of soil and a marigold seed to take care of and grow at home. Afterward, they will get to experiment with different tools to figure out which one works best to clean up an oil spill in order to keep marine life safe.
Ages 5-10, children must be accompanied by an adult.
Easter Adventure and Celebration Weekend!


Issue 1: Richard Prosser - is he racist? What are the ramifications for NZ First and does this reflect poorly on MMP?
Issue 2: Salvation Army gives the Government a D for child poverty, housing and employment - what is the Government doing?
and Issue 3 tonight: John Key's decision to take Australia's refugees - what do we get?


Yes are a progressive rock band that formed in London, England in 1968 that is among the most influential progressive bands of all time. The band has received wide critical praise for their work. Their best known songs include "Owner of a Lonely Heart", "Roundabout" and "I've Seen All Good People".
This page was last changed on 22 June 2018, at 06:20.


375 quotes single quotes, and escape sequences in a bash-like manner.
581 * script_unames() doesn't crash anymore.
632 * More GPL/header/rcsid stuff.
652 * Reverted some stuff that shouldn't have been gettextified.
706 * Removed eggdrop_t stuff since global table is gone.
715 * Should do it..
727 * More header stuff.
734 * More from last commit.
751 * GPL headers and rcsid's on newly added files (part 1).
767 * Removed some unneeded macros from acconfig/tcl.m4.
768 * Removed some unneded compat functions related to tcl.m4.
769 * Do not exit when tcl isn't installed on the system. Just warn.
770 * Prerequire autconf 2.53.
771 * bootstrap to use automake-1.6.
791 * botchk works now.
804 * Set permissions on config.xml... the right copy this one.
853 * Fixes from last commit.
870 * Added pidfile and die_on_sigterm to config.
871 * Added 'act' party command.
872 * Started a 'status' party command.
896 * Fix from last commit.
1074 * Fixed 2 warnings.
1116 been present since 1.3.0+bel17.
1117 * Fixed some leftover language defines.
1202 random password and print it out.
1210 * This commit is dedicated to guppy and his girl!
1212 with a null source.
1271 yet another post-it on my monitor..."do not use // for comments..."
1397 * match_nick script function... to match nicks.
1475 * Sync 1.6: pls_chan_error, mns_ban-fix, has_flags-get_channel.
1509 * Update autoconf macro usage.
1510 * Simplify autoconf variables.
1536 * Fixed a small typo.
1542 * Updates and fixes for configure/Makefile stuff.
1548 * Upgraded to latest mpatrol.m4.
1554 * Fixed small typo.
1560 * Corrected file permissions for config.rpath.
1566 * Make maintainer-clean make target remove m4/Makefile.in.
1592 * Upgraded gettext to version 0.11.5.
1598 * Upgraded to latest config.guess and config.sub.
1604 * Revert LTLIBOBJS changes for now.
1616 * Removed EGG_LTLIBOBJS macro.
1617 + See: 'AC_LIBOBJ vs. LIBOBJS' in the autoconf manual.
1627 * Converted most strncpy() usage to strlcpy().
1641 * server_support "name" function to return values from 005, e.g.
1679 * Reverted last snprintf changes.
1680 * Cosmetic changes to addpatch.
1688 * Removed debugx() macros.
1695 already check for a C99 compliant vsnprintf.
1702 Simplify checking for broken snprintf/vsnprintf functions.
1710 * More Tcl-related autotools cleanups.
1717 * More doc stuff.


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At the last step of skin care, apply appropriate amount around your eyes and spread thoroughly.
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Social networks are on the advance, but when it comes to collaboration and intuition, they quickly reach their limits – and this is where SAP Jam scores big.
SAP SCP Workflow and SCP Business Rules help companies to create process-driven IT architectures, with agile, flexible processes thus keeping pace with digital-native start-ups.
In January, SAP Field Kick-Off Meetings (FKOMs) took place in EMEA, North America and APJ. SAP is taking this opportunity to recognize the top-performing SAP partners in those regions. The award reflects the partners' commitment and success within the SAP environment. We are honored to be the recipient of three awards in 2018.
In May 2016, Apple and SAP dropped a bombshell: they were to become partners. A fair amount of time has passed since then. What have they been doing in the meantime? And what does this collaboration mean for SAP customers and developers?


The Students are waiting for the final PEC 5th & 8th Class Result 2019 with irritation which is expected to be declared by the Punjab Education Commission on 31st March 2019 on Sunday at 10:30 at www.pec.edu.pk in the morning in the whole Punjab including thirty seven districts Kasur, Khanewal, Khushab, Lahore, Layyah , Lodraih, Mandi Bahauddin, Mianwali, Multan, Muzaffargarh , Narowal, Nankana Sahib Okara, Pakpattan, Raheem Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Rawalpindi, Sahiwal, Sargodha, Sheikhupura, Sialkot, Toba Tek Singh Attock, Bahawalnagar, Bhakkar, Chakwal, Chiniot, Dera Ghazi Khan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Gujarat, Hafizabad, Jhung and Jhelum to chose their career in best way easily.
The candidates from public and private sectors can access their results from the official cite of the Punjab Examination Commission by providing their name are roll numbers. The gazettes are also provided in all districts of Punjab to see PEC Fifth and Eighth Class Result 2019 in which all students get their results cards from their concerned schools and the result of private is posted by the PEC at their home addresses.
A large number of the candidates are appearing in an annual examination in every year. The Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) functions in a planned and strategic method which stars from the registration of candidates for examination to end at formulated district wise systematic results in the whole Punjab. The Registration free of cost is completed only by the respective Examination Cluster Center (ECC) – Govt. Secondary/Higher Secondary School by suing PEC online Student Registration Software (OSRS). Usually, registration of the students starts in the month of November and all candidates can get prescribed forms for registration which are available at educational offices or ECC in their respective districts and also can be downloaded here.
The Roll Number Slips are issued to all qualified candidates of all districts by Punjab Examination Commission (PES) in all over the Punjab to deliver in schools as well as private candidates. After issuing PEC 5th 8th Class Roll No Slips 2019 the data is sent to the respective districts for further verification. Frequently, the Five & Eight Class Roll Number Slips 2019 are issued in the month of January.
The date sheet of all subjects is prepared and published by the Punjab Examination Commission which uploaded on the site of PES where from the students can also download easily to avoid any difficulty. The model and sample papers of all subjects also has been uploaded at the official website of the Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) for the assistance of all candidates during the preparation of examination to keep away from any complexity.
The administration of the Chief Executive Officer, District Education Authority (DEA) is responsible to apportion nearby examination centers in the favor of students in which supervisory staff and monitoring staff is deployed to monitor the scoring process. The scoring centers for each subject are also conducted at tehsil level by the Administration. Commonly, the Examination of grade V and VIII are held in 01 and 02 weeks of February every year respectively. After marking the papers by the examiners, the scoring sheets of all subjects consisting of multiple choice questions filled by the student are sent to the Punjab Examination Commission.
The results are prepared through scanned images of the scoring sheets. The PEC prepare the result within six weeks and issues the result gazettes by mentioning the total scores of each student of the all-district.The districts announce the results on the 31st of March. The result can be checked on the website of the Punjab Examination Commission. The result reports are published by the PEC to deliver the results reports to districts for distribution among the students. The errors and complaints against result, name, date of birth, etc are settled down through District Education Offices.
The PES made functional in 2005 and in 2006 conducted 05th grade examination for the first time in the province of Punjab. The PEC is working as a statutory body under Punjab Examination Commission Act XI of 2010.
It develops tests and get print for the district of Punjab. The Punjab Examination is working under the supervision of the Government of the Punjab who is responsible to control, conduct and held the examination and announce the result of grade 05th and grade 08th result 2019 in all over Punjab. First of all, the candidates who apply for examination have to proceed by providing necessary personal information for registration in PEC according to defined rules and regulations. The Result of Class V & VIII Class Result 2019 will be announced at the official website of the Punjab Examination Commission.
The PEC prepares PEC 5th & 8th Class Result 2019 for each district about 02 to 05 million students both from public and private sector schools every year. The Punjab Examination Commission (PES) is an autonomous body set up by the Government of Punjab to assess and examine students by learning achievements predominantly of grade 5 & 8.


Kulayaraja Tantra (Tib. ཀུན་བྱེད་རྒྱལ་པོ་, künjé gyalpo, Wyl. kun byed rgyal po) or 'The All-Creating King Tantra' is the main tantra of the Mind category of the Dzogchen teachings. It is contained in the ancient tantras section of the Dergé Kangyur and is the very first text in the Nyingma Gyübum.
The main part of the text is in 57 chapters (mdo lung). Chapters 58-84 comprise what is known as the 'appended tantra'. The first 57 chapters were translated by Pagor Vairotsana and Shrisingha(natha).
↑ In the Tsamdrak edition.
John Myrdhin Reynolds, 'Kun byed Rgyal po: The Principal Dzogchen Tantra', in The Golden Letters Ithaca: Snow Lion, 1996.
This page was last edited on 1 May 2018, at 19:27.


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FILMS > FINISHED >
BEHIND THE FENCE
POLISH TITLE: ZA PŁOTEM
REPRESENTED BY KFF
One of the main thrusts behind the making of the film is an attempt to return to the time of childhood, vacation, and hot summer. I remember the feeling when the indefinite number of noteworthy details, things to discover, stories to explore, matters to think over made each day seem to last forever.
FILM REPRESENTED BY THE KRAKOW FILM FOUNDATION
Marcin Sauter
DOP:
Dawid Sokołowski
Artur Owczarek
Mistrzowska Szkoła Reżyserii Filmowej Andrzeja Wajdy (obecnie: Wajda Studio)
Marcin Sauter »
Photographer, cinematographer and film director. Born in 1971 in Bydgoszcz. A member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers, he has had several dozen individual exhibitions of photography. He teaches at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. He established the foundation The Bydgoszcz Newsreel. His adventure with the cinema started in 1997 when he cooperated with Maciej Cuske on the feature film "What Do You Think About It, Gałuszko?". Then, he continued with such documentaries as "The Travelling Cinema" (2005), "North From Calabria" (2009) and "Hakawati" (2011).
AT FESTIVALS:
Hong Kong International Film Festival, China, 2007 (screening)
Tempo Documentary Festival, Stockholm, Sweden, 2007 (screening)
Molodist, Kiyev, Ukraine, 2008 (screening)
Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol, UK, 2008 (screening)
Short Film Festival of Nice, Un Festival C'est Trop Court, France, 2010 (screening)
Le Mois du Film Documentaire, France, 2010 (screening)
28th Festival Tous Courts, France, 2010 (screening)
KINOTEKA - 9th Polish Film Festival, London, UK, 2011 (screening)
DocsDF 2012, Mexico, 2012 (screening)
Short Ends Film Festival, UK, 2005 (Grand Prix)
Cinéma du Réel, France, 2006 (Short Film Award)
Vilnius Film Shorts, Lithuania, 2006 (Grand Prix)
Aye Aye Film Festival Nancy-Lorraine, France, 2009 (competition)
20 mim|max Short Film Festival, Ingolstadt, Germany, 2010 (competition)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


lukacollections Great seller to deal with! Pleasant transaction! Seller was very responsive and helpful with any questions about the product! Cheers!
car0use11adm1n Great seller to deal with!
vizcloset Great buyer to deal with!i Punctual! Thank you!
@skipperino123 is on Carousell - Follow to stay updated!


I've been meaning to learn how to code beyond HTML for years now, but never have managed to do much more than borrow other people's cryptic code and, by trial and error, swap out variables until things worked for the situation at hand. But this year, I have a DEADLINE and this deadline is as fierce and as frightening as a tiger.
I'm not going to dwell on the fact that I should have started my learning earlier. There's no time for that. Instead, I'm going to roll out my plan on learning how to code.
I've already completed the essential first step: I've found my learning community.
And now all I have to do is the business of *doing* what I need to do.
A couple years ago, I was so inspired by this talk by Matt Webb that I resolved to find and dedicate 100 hours to learning Ancient Greek history. I did and the 100 hours passed faster than I had imagined and I found my life so much richer. Now while I do dishes, I listen to the most excellent History of Rome podcast. I'll be listening to episode 92 tonight.
And doing the dishes is the key to how I am going to learn how to code.
I am going to build a new habit into my existing daily routine. After my kids are put to bed and the rest of the dishes are put away (I have a difficult time resisting my kids persistent request to play with them after supper), I am going to sit down and spend at least 15 minutes learning to code. I'm actually hoping to put in 40 minutes a day, but right now the most important thing is get the "Kids. Dishes. Code" routine in place.
At 40 minutes a day, it will take me 150 days to reach the 100 hour mark which should bring me to June 1st. And that's a date that's much more inspiring than a deadline.


Note: there is NO meeting dance before the ritual because the spiral dance occurs inside it.
Jay who scatters; Buzzard reaps.
This is the air I conjure, and this is the birth of the world.
Phoenix dies and is reborn.
This is the fire I conjure, and this is the birth of the world.
This is the sea I conjure, and this is the birth of the world.
Stag who guards; Puma who preys.
This is the earth I conjure, and this is the birth of the world.
Now is the darkness. Now is the pain. Now is the fear.
Now is the danger. Now is the hate. Now are the tears.
Call on our mother! She is the one! Hers is the way!
She will bring comfort. She will bring life. She will bring day.
Sea Mother, Stone Mother, Star Mother!
Teach us how to strike the spark.
People, we can feel Her near!
She is coming! She is here!
In peace and plenty made complete.
The strength, the soul, the sight, the say.
Live anew in a new year!
Oak, thou druid's door, open the way for us.
Apple, thou knowledge-giver, break our circle of blindness.
Ash, thou world-supporter, drive away ill powers.
Birch, thou tree-mother, help in our healing.
Hawthorn, thou branch of May, give us light and hope.
Willow, thou soul-leader, grant us safe passage.
Holly, thou forest king, be our safe refuge.
Hazel, thou wise-one's branch, give us true vision.
Alder, thou river's love, let us flow outward.
Between the worlds to our rebirth.
Sun Father, Sap Father, Song Father!
Teach us how to make us whole!
People, we can feel Him near!
He is coming! He is here!
Let the light of living blaze!
Out you go and in you come!
Touching at the lip and loin.
Music, song, the vine, the chance!
Dance the healing and release!
God: Mine is the ripening sun.
Goddess: Mine is the nurturing soil.
God: Mine is the fruit of the vine.
Goddess: Mine is the chalice of life.
Both: We are the blessing of wine! And the wine blesses us.
God: Mine is the planted seed.
Goddess: Mine is the fertile earth.
God: Mine is the mower's blade.
Goddess: Mine is the oven of making.
Both: We are the blessing of bread! And the bread blesses us.
Feasting, dancing, singing, party, etc. Some kind of grounding afterwards.


Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is one of the main factors which is valuable to create beautiful and dynamic websites. So we use CSS for styling our apps in apps.loklak.org.
1.Always try something new – The loklak apps website is very flexible according to the user whomsoever creates an app. The user is always allowed to use any new CSS frameworks to create an app.
2.Strive for Simplicity – As the app grows, we'll start developing a lot more than we imagine like many CSS rules and elements etc. Some of the rules may also override each other without we noticing it. It's good practice to always check before adding a new style rule—maybe an existing one could apply.
Always use semantic or "familiar" class/id names.
Follow DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) Principle.
Pages must continue to work when style sheets are disabled. In this case this means that the apps which are written in apps.loklak.org should run in any and every case. Let's say for instance, when a user uses a old browsers or bugs or either because of style conflicts.
Do not use the !important attribute to override the user's settings. Using the !important declaration is often considered bad practice because it has side effects that mess with one of CSS's core mechanisms: specificity. In many cases, using it could indicate poor CSS architecture.
If you have multiple style sheets, then make sure to use the same CLASS names for the same concept in all of the style sheets.
Do not use more than two fonts. Using a lot of fonts simply because you can will result in a messy look.
A firm rule for home page design is more is less : the more buttons and options you put on the home page, the less users are capable of quickly finding the information they need.
See more apps in apps.loklak.org.
Checkout the code of the apps at: https://github.com/fossasia/apps.loklak.org .
More about CSS and styling at https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Overview.en.html .


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Трансцендентальная диалектика () — раздел трансцендентальной логики, критикующий притязания рассудка на сверхфизическое применение, которое Кант называет метафизическим фиглярством. Диалектику вообще Кант называет логикой видимости. В случае трансцендентальной диалектики лежит видимое противоречие трансцендентальных идей, которое раскрывается в четырех антиномиях (2 кн, 2 гл, 5 раздел):
 Мир конечен или бесконечен в пространстве и времени
 Существуют или не существуют мельчайшие элементы вещества
 Обладаем или не обладаем мы свободой
 Существует или не существует абсолютно необходимое существо (), например, Бог
Примечательно, что Кант называет попытку решения этих антиномий в режиме да или нет — трансцендентальной видимостью, а сами дилеммы ложными.

Кантианство
Трансцендентальное

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Blogs > Jim Loewen > We Have Had a Gay President, Just Not Nixon
We Have Had a Gay President, Just Not Nixon
In his recent article in the Washington Post "Was Nixon Gay?" journalism professor Mark Feldstein puts down the claim recently made by Don Fulsom in his book Nixon's Darkest Secrets. Almost no evidence supports it, he (rightly) points out. He calls the book a "pathography," using a term invented by Joyce Carol Oates for biographies that emphasize the pathological.
But then he goes on to decry similar claims about Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, and J. Edgar Hoover as similarly baseless.
Just as we should not rush to believe all the rumors about the sexual orientations of important past Americans, neither should we rush to deny them. Feldstein implies that history on this issue is just about impossible: "[T]here is almost no way to prove—or disprove—alleged intimacies from so long ago." But there is. It is called evidence.
Consider the case of President Buchanan. For many years in Washington, he lived with William Rufus King, Senator from Alabama. The two men were inseparable; wags referred to them as "the Siamese twins." Andrew Jackson dubbed King "Miss Nancy"; Aaron Brown, a prominent Democrat, writing to Mrs. James K. Polk, referred to him as Buchanan's "better half," "his wife," and "Aunt Fancy." When in 1844 King was appointed minister to France, he wrote Buchanan, "I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation." After King's departure, Buchanan wrote to a Mrs. Roosevelt about his social life:
I am now "solitary and alone," having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them.
King and Buchanan's relationship, though interrupted from time to time by their foreign service, ended only with King's death in 1853.
I find the evidence for Buchanan's homosexuality, summarized above and presented in greater detail with footnotes in Lies Across America, persuasive beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the standard for a criminal conviction. Homosexuality is no longer a crime, however, at least in most of the country, and should never have been in the first place, so the criminal standard should not apply anyway. Surely these facts surpass the "preponderance of the evidence" standard required in civil trials—and for good history.
Does it make any difference? In Buchanan's case, almost surely it does. He became a stalwart of the radically pro-slavery wing of the Democratic Party. He supported U.S. expansion into Cuba because he worried that Spain might abolish slavery, leading to another black-run nation like Haiti. He appointed Howell Cobb Secretary of the Treasury; Cobb later became the first president of the Confederacy, before Jefferson Davis. He let his Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, soon to become a Confederate general, ship nearly 200,000 rifles to Southern arsenals. In 1860, Buchanan vetoed a homestead bill providing making Western land available cheaply from the government. He did so because planters opposed it: homesteading would have drawn free men, probably free-soil men, to the West. It had to wait until halfway through Lincoln's administration.
Buchanan's faction's newspaper, the Washington Union, even pushed for the United States Supreme Court to take the Dred Scott decision one step further. Dred Scott required the United States to guarantee slavery in every territory, regardless of the wishes of its residents. Buchanan's paper argued that the United States should guarantee its citizens the right to carry their property—all kinds of property—in any state as well. It flatly came out against the very existence of free states: "The emancipation of the slaves of the northern States was then, as previously stated, a gross outrage on the rights of property, inasmuch as it was not a voluntary relinquishment on the part of the owners." [their italics]
Yet Buchanan hailed from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, surrounded by Mennonites and Quakers, the most anti-slavery white neighbors one could imagine. His own church, the Presbyterian, refused him membership for years because of his pro-slavery views. Coming from such a background, why would Buchanan endorse such a position? Surely his pro-slavery politics stemmed, at least in part, from his 23-year connection with King. Certainly Buchanan thought highly of King: "He is among the best, purest, and most consistent public men I have ever known, and is also a sound judging and discreet fellow."
Buchanan's sexual orientation matters in another way, too. It's important for all Americans to realize that gays (and now lesbians) can be president, indeed, can play all sorts of important roles in American society. The best way for us to realize that is by understanding the roles that gays and lesbians have played. Our greatest poet, Walt Whitman, was gay (and as with Buchanan, it influenced his work). Gays have been major composers—Aaron Copland comes to mind first, and although I cannot hear how his homosexuality affected "Appalachian Spring" or "Symphony #3," again, it's important to know it. Otherwise, we may conclude that gays and lesbians have made little impact in our past, so they hardly matter.
Late in his article, Feldstein also denounces conspiracy theories, including those that have sprung up around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He implies that they are equally baseless. He needs to visit the Museum of the Sixth Floor in Dallas, which does a model job of presenting the various major theories of who shot Kennedy. The museum does not suggest that all conspiracies are equally likely. But neither does it say that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy, and then Jack Ruby, acting alone, killed Oswald. It presents the evidence.
Feldstein complains that revisionism can be "oblivious to facts." So can put-downs of revisionism, as Feldstein lamentably demonstrates. Throwing up our hands with the excuse that "there's no way to know" simply won't do.


Hotel Le Prese has 28 stylishly furnished rooms, some with a balcony.
All rooms have an en-suite bathroom with a shower or bath tub. Most rooms offer a magnificent view of Lake Poschiavo, while others face the majestic peaks of the Bernina Range.
Combining select materials, shapes and colours, each room has its own unique, personal and exclusive charm. The harmonious combination of tradition, atmosphere and service makes for a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
All rooms are non-smoking and are fitted with all mod cons to make your stay on the lake a pleasurable and relaxing one: free wireless Internet access, hairdryer, direct-dial telephone, flat-screen TV, minibar and safe.


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YouTube picture-in-picture is working for some non-Red users outside of US
Android Oreo brought a feature that would be available for third-party developers: picture-in-picture apps. A perfect example of this is the way that Google Maps is able to tuck away to a corner while you switch to another app to change music or to...
ZTE asks the US Commerce Department to lift its ban
ZTE was banned from buying Qualcomm chipsets for the next seven years after not following through with a settlement breaching a trade embargo. The company had to reprimand or fine 35 employees but didn't comply, and now it faces losing its Android...
07 May 2018 33
More official renders of Nokia X6 appear
The Nokia X6, previously known as Nokia X, is arriving on May 16, as we reported earlier. Images revealed it will have a notch, as did a hands-on video of the phone. Now some more press renders arrive thanks to the retailer Suning that is having a...
ZTE nubia teases new full-screen device
ZTE's subsidiary nubia has its own solution for border-less phones, introduced back in 2015 with the launch of the nubia Z9. The tech followed through all the way to nubia Z17s with 18:9 screen, but now the company is bringing something new,...
Entry-level Panasonic P95 debuts
The new week barely started unfolding and we already have a new phone announcement, coming from Panasonic India. The company introduced a new addition to its P-series portfolio - the Panasonic P95, coming with Snapdragon 212 chipset and...
Huawei releases Android Oreo Beta for seven more phones
Huawei announced its first Android Oreo upgrade plans back in October at the Mate 10 launch. It said the Mate 9 and P10 phones were next in line, but now we hear the rollout will be expanding to quite a few other phones. The full list includes...
New Assistant for Wear OS features start rolling out
Last week, Google announced some major new features that it said will soon be available on Assistant for Wear OS. The good news is the update has started rolling out. What's more, the roll out isn't limited to the US, as users in Europe as...
HMD exec hints Nokia 5 (2018) is coming
HMD has seemingly confirmed the successor to the Nokia 5 from last year is coming. In a reply to a user query on Twitter, the company's chief product officer Juho Sarvikas dropped a strong hint suggesting the phone is incoming. stay tuned :)—...
Google offering $10 discount on the Home Mini ($40 when you buy two)
Google has launched a promo on its Home Mini speaker just in time for this year's Mother's Day. The company is offering a $10 discount on each purchase of a single Home Mini unit. The saving goes up to $40 if you purchase two units. The deal,...
Apple replacing some iPhone X units plagued with Face ID issues
Late last week, it came to light that Apple has asked its Authorized Service Providers to repair iPhone 7 series phones with disabled microphones (caused by iOS 11.3 or later updates). And now, according to another leaked document sent out by...
Pre-order pricing for LG V30S ThinQ dropped by $200
US pre-orders for LG V30S ThinQ went live only last week, with the device carrying a whopping $929.99 price tag. However, if you take a look at the B&H listing now, you'll see the asking price has been dropped. Yes, the device has already...
Deal: Grab a first-gen Nokia 6 for $199
In a limited time offer, the first generation Nokia 6 smartphone is currently going for $199 at Newegg. That, if you compare, is a price cut of $30 given its usual price tag of $229. As you can see in the following screenshot, you need to use the...
Week 18 in review: LG G7 ThinQ and Galaxy A6 duo go official
LG finally took the wraps off the G7 ThinQ this week. At that point we already had a good idea what to expect from LG's latest but it was nice to have the remaining blanks filled. Samsung also unveiled a much anticipated duo - the Galaxy A6...
Weekly poll: LG G7 ThinQ, hot or not?
LG wanted to get it right with the LG G7 ThinQ and decided not to follow the schedule of others. Still, it has been two months after the MWC ended and its primary competition is already chalking up sales records while the G-flagship won't be...
06 May 2018 125
Motorola Moto G6 Play in for review
While the Moto G6 Play is the most member of the newly announced trio, spanning the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus, it still has a lot to offer, especially for a price tag of around €200. In fact, the whole feel of the device doesn't seem all that...
Top 10 trending phones of week 18
It's been a while since we saw a change in the lead of our weekly popularity chart, but week 18 finally delivered it. The Xiaomi Mi 6X, which should hit international markets as A2 has overtaken the Redmi Note 5 Pro and Huawei P20 Pro to grab the...
Weekly poll results: the Xiaomi Mi A2 gets the thumbs up and some suggestions
The Xiaomi Mi A2 has a solid fan base that voted 2-to-1 in its favor. Not bad results for the second-generation Android One phone from Xiaomi, which will be available in MIUI flavor in China under the name Mi 6X. In fact, it's mostly available in...
Counterclockwise: the brief popularity of stereo speakers
Two ears, two speakers is a pretty simple equation. However, in recent times it has become pretty common to see a single speaker – on most phones and even portable Bluetooth speakers often have just one. Looking through our data, we found the...
Adobe's mobile Photoshop Express adds some cool new features
Adobe Photoshop Express received a cool new update that adds some useful features including automatic perspective correction, vignette effect and the option to share multiple images directly from the gallery. To be honest, the vignette effect...
vivo Y75s and Y83 get certified, most specs revealed
Just five months after the debut of the vivo Y75 back in December, the company is readying to launch a refresh named vivo Y75s, according to a TENAA listing and vivo's official website. Of course, specs have also been revealed along with another...
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Q: How to evaluate autoencoder performance by mse? I want to train autoencoder on mnist dataset to generate images similar to input. That's code I found:
% Load the training data.
XTrain = digitTrainCellArrayData;

%%
% Train an autoencoder with a hidden layer containing 50 neurons.
hiddenSize = 50;
autoenc = trainAutoencoder(XTrain,hiddenSize,...
        'MaxEpochs', 200, ...
        'L2WeightRegularization', 10^(-3),...
        'SparsityRegularization',1,...
        'SparsityProportion',0.45);

% Load the test data.
XTest = digitTestCellArrayData;

% Reconstruct the test image data using the trained autoencoder.
xReconstructed = predict(autoenc, XTest);

And now I want to somehow evaluate performance of my autoencoder and I'm not sure how to do it. I found here that MSE can be used between real and reconstructed data set. However when I tried this:
mse(XTest - xReconstructed)

I obtain error
Operator '-' is not supported for operands of type 'cell'.

How can I properly perform evaluation of this autoencoder using mse?

A: There are mainly two kind of metrics/loss function in generative models/image restoration models

*

*reference based

*

*l2 loss (~rmse loss)

*l1 loss

*PSNR : peak Signal-to-Noise ratio

*non-reference based

*

*SSIM : structural similarity index,

*MS-SSIM : Multi-scale SSIM

*Also there are metrics that are combination of both of classes (Ex. Mixed SM-SSIM)
For more detailed understanding you can read this paper.

I think for the error you got can be resolve by,
mse(vec1, vec2)
*It could also depends on library you are using.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Yea I know this thread is old, but I got to say thank you!
This just helped me when changing permissions from a HDD configured in Windows XP Professional to work on Windows 7 Ultimate. Thank you so much!
I was having the similar security issue as well and went thru step by step as I read this thread. I did a fresh Win7 install and was not able to access my Music folder like I could before. With no solution found, I went back to the help files from Windows 7 and found step by step on how to take ownership of a file or folder. I search under "Take Ownership of a File or Folder" I listed step by step similar to how it was discussed earlier in this thread. This steps worked for me in my current setup.
When I right clicked on properties and security tab, then advanced and made my username (setup as admin) i told Win7 that i was now the new owner, it did not work. So i thought, why restrict this folder to just me. So, i clicked on Onwer tab, then click edit, then other users or groups and typed "EVERYONE" so after i applied it, it worked.
i have a same problem here. my problem is on flight simulator being lock and not able to see the file. when i try to on my flight sim and because this particular airport in this file is being lock and not able to fly on this airport. so the file is been lock.
here i let u see the sc shot.
i hope you can help me with step by step.
I also had this problem on Windows 10 and the suggestion to create a new folder on the drive and then CUT and PASTE the contents of the folder with the permissions problem into the newly created folder worked for me.
The process mentioned here can be quite tedious if you have multiple folders and subfolders to apply these security settings to.